Oy vey

So today was my first real chance to start working on my Ljod cardigan (since deciding to finish it as my husband's anniversary present): I now know where the pattern book is, and my husband had a shift at work all day. I was so looking forward to making real progress on it. I figured I would make especially good progress since DD3 is recovering from a cold which hit its apex last night and made it really hard for her to sleep, so I thought she'd nap like a champ today because she'd be so tired.

Not.
A.
Chance.

First of all, DD3 woke up earlier than usual and then proceeded to stay awake almost all day, with the exception of a one-hour nap around 1pm, which took me 45 minutes to settle her down into, and which was (temporarily) interrupted 20 minutes in by her waking up and crying. (Even now, she is interrupting the writing of this post by waking up and wailing quite frequently. Poor thing.)

That's not very conducive to figuring out where you last left off in a complex pattern.

And then, getting the right front started (turns out I had left off really, really close to finishing the left front, so I was at least able to wrap that up in a snap) was a total comedy of errors.

Firstly, although I adore her designs, I find the writeups of Elsebeth Lavold's patterns to be confusing/unclear/not as helpful as one might hope for. Secondly, I can be a complete moron sometimes when it comes to the knitting. So that's two huge strikes against me right there.

To start with, the right front instructions just say to follow the left front instructions but reversing all shaping. However, it turns out - once you get about seven rows into it - that it's not just the shaping you need to reverse, but the pattern setup as well. So that necessitated some frogging (fortunately not seven rows' worth, as I actually - gasp - read ahead and discovered the problem early, so I only had to tink back about 30 stitches). Next, I forgot to switch to the larger needles after the bottom ribbing was complete. (Riiiip.) And then I missed starting the gusset decreases until a few rows beyond where the first decrease was supposed to happen. (Riiiip.) And then I compared the right front (nicely in progress at this point) to the left front and the back, and realised that, for whatever reason, my gauge now was way bigger than my gauge then. After doing some measuring, I guesstimated that to fix this, I just needed to work the large-needle bits with the smaller needle size, and I would probably be okay. (Riiiiiiip!)

Not to mention the various phone calls throughout the day that ate into my available time.

Then I went to Knit Night at my LYS, hoping that either DD3 would be able to sleep through it since she was probably exhausted, or that others would want to hold her and I could get some knitting done? No way - she was awake, cranky, and, for the most part, unhappy unless I was holding her.

So no progress shots today, folks - sorry, but there just wasn't enough actual progress to merit it. Yes, at least I've gotten going on the cardigan again, which is great, but I've got just three weeks to do a front, two sleeves, and the making up, and am hampered by the challenge of not being able to knit on this thing when my husband is around (which is often).

Yowza.